Feedback, learning and change

When most of us were at school failure was seen as something that was negative, should be avoided and often worth punishment. And yet most learning theorists agree that it is only through failure that we really learn – as opposed to just memorising. Failure is useful when it helps us critically appraise our own performance. This is evaluation is an example of feedback. A simple way to think of feedback is experiencing the output of your own performance as a new input.

Students of psychology and education are becoming increasingly aware of the vital role that feedback plays in how we learn. All complex systems (like your body, your organisation, your family, your community) change their behaviour or learn through feedback - even if this means weaving in and out of the best path (like Wiener’s boat example) rather than sticking to the best path in any strict way.

The concept of feedback was developed by Norbert Wiener, who used the analogy of someone steering a boat: “When the boat deviates from the present course, say to the right, the steersman assesses the deviation and then countersteers by moving the rudder to the left. This decreases the boat's deviation, perhaps even to the point of moving through the correct position and then deviating to the left. At some time during this movement the steersman makes a new assessment of the boat's deviation, countersteers accordingly, assesses the deviation again, and so on. Thus he relies on continual feedback to keep the boat on course, its actual trajectory oscillating around the present direction. The skill of steering a boat consists in keeping these oscillations as smooth as possible.” (Capra 1996:57)

Even if you cannot predict the outcome, turning up the volume of feedback will always produce more sustainable results. As long as all the bits are talking to each other, something better will emerge. Feedback can be seen as a flow of information, in the in-between spaces, that constantly invites new responses from all the parts, improving the quality of all relationships within the system and allowing a system to learn how to do more for less effort. Sometimes something completely new and unexpected can arise out of the in-between spaces and take the whole system to another level.

Feedback allows you to make those corrections to your own behaviour that are necessary to lift your performance to another level. But how, and from where, can we get effective, reliable and performance enhancing feedback in the systems in which we live and the organisations in which we work?

Many people respond quite negatively to feedback, irrespective of how well intentioned it might be. Many people resist useful feedback because they fear failure and rejection. They therefore experience critical feedback as a personal attack. People who live in short timeframes experience critical feedback as something that defines them as a failure. By contrast, people who live in long timeframes experience critical feedback as data on how to succeed and grow on their own learning path.

Those who resist feedback are unlikely to change their behaviour when they receive it. This has important implications for the way your organisation deals with performance appraisals and the way it helps members design career paths. Opportunities for feedback are often misappropriated to make people feel worthless and incompetent. For feedback to be effective, organisations have to link feedback and learning and commit to both as core values in their corporate cultures.

One solution is to engage feedback as an ongoing conversation in your organisation, rather than a formal summary of someone’s performance, at a single and arbitrary point in time, with an abstract mark attached to it.

if you are not failing at something, you aren't learning anything new

People often fear their appraisals or assessments, whereas they could be looking forward to an opportunity to learn and to grow both themselves and the organisation. This is what Weiner called “reciprocal modification” – the change in me is a change in you. This ongoing “conversation” is what is often referred to as continuous assessment as opposed to summative assessment.

Effective feedback also has implications for top performers. In the old days people who were getting 80% were “better” than everyone else and did not have to try as hard. In the philosophy of Outcomes-Based Education, people should not be measured against each other. Individuals should be measured against their own potential and expectations. If they are getting high marks it does not mean they can rest in the knowledge of their superiority. It means it is time to find a new growing edge, a new challenge on their learning path. If you are not failing at something you are not learning anything new.

Members of your organisation need to be coached in the mechanisms and dynamics of effective feedback and how it relates to their own learning path. They need to begin to see feedback as an opportunity to improve and grow rather than as a personal attack or a defining statement of their identity. It should also help people to experience their lives in long timeframes in which criticism doesn’t define them but is experienced as useful information on a long and fruitful learning path. It should also encourage them to experiment with behavioural changes in a way that is slightly demanding, but is relatively safe, enjoyable, creative and rewarding.

Some questions about the feedback you're getting

• How are you providing feedback?

• Is it working?
• How would you know that it is working?
• How do you respond to feedback?
• Are you growing?
• What tells you that you are growing?
• What are the current mechanisms of feedback in your organisation?
• How could you evaluate and improve their function?
• How does cooperation pay in your organisation?
• Are you ready to experiment with new feedback processes?

From Art & Science of Change - A Resource for Management and Leadership - (ISBN-978-0-9802550-3-4) Ubuhibi Media used with permission